This reply so pleased the Czar, that he took the boy into his service. When Peter the Great first became the sole ruler of Russia, after the downfall of Sophia, he was about twenty years of age. His word was law. Life and death hung upon his will. His dominions extended so far, that, when he wished to send an ambassador to one of his neighbors—the emperor of China—it took the messenger more than eighteen months of constant travelling to go from the capital to the frontier. As to Peter’s character, he was talented, ambitious, energetic, and resolute; but he was also quick-tempered, imperious, merciless, towards his enemies, and possessed an indomitable will. Peter thus describes his first trial of the open sea:— “For some years I had the fill of my desires on Lake Pereyaslávl, but finally it grew too narrow for me. I then went to the Kúbensky Lake, but that was too shallow. I then decided to see the open sea, and began often to beg the permission of my mother to go to Archangel. She forbade me such a dangerous journey, but, seeing my great desire, and my unchangeable longing, allowed it, in spite of herself.” So, in 1693, Peter set out from Moscow, with a suite of a hundred persons, to go to Archangel. Having arrived there, the smell of the salt water was too inviting to be resisted; and Peter put out to sea on a little yacht, called St. Peter, which had been built for him. His mother, who had exacted a promise that he would not go to sea, hearing that he had gone on a sea journey, was much alarmed, and wrote to him, urging his return. She even had a letter written to him, in the name of his little son, Alexis, then three years old, begging him to come back. To this he replied:— “By thy letter I see, oh! oh! that thou hast been mightily grieved, and why? Why dost thou trouble thyself about me? Thou hast deigned to write that thou hast given me into the care of the Virgin. When thou hast such a guardian for me, why dost thou grieve?”